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Some excellent library bloggers have recently set up a project in which our kind blog both our routes into librarianship, and our roots in librarianship, and this is my contribution. I'll leap straight in, but do check out the other fascinating entries at the Library Routes Wiki. My route into librarianship has been a meandering one, starting with an MSc in Occupational Psychology (the psychology of work and organisations). My roots in librarianship, which we'll come to later, started a long time before that.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do after my undergrad, but after a year of trying the world of work decided I'd return and study an area of my degree I'd particularly enjoyed, Occupational Psychology. My MSc dissertation focused on a centre in Sheffield offering work-related IT courses and I became interested in learning and technology. Looking for work afterwards, I discovered that the University of Nottingham were offering studentships at their new Learning Sciences Research Institute, so I applied. My topic ended up being homework: specifically I focused on how technologies could be embedded in the home, given family's views on privacy, their interactions around homework technologies, and various other criteria. However, as I worked on my PhD I developed an interest in how the theories I was studying applied to my student / research role. How I and those around me used technologies to learn and search for information became a larger and larger interest.

With my PhD it would have been quite easy to move within fields to study this academically, but I was reluctant to continue an academic career path. I don't know when I suddenly realised that librarianship contained people-focused and applied roles which encompassed many of my interests, but I do remember increasingly thinking about librarianship as a career. However, given previous multiple changes in direction, I wanted to try a spell in libraries to decide if they were right for me, so I applied for and got a part-time maternity cover job in the George Green Library at the University of Nottingham while I was writing up my PhD thesis.

The job at George Green gave me a broad experience of libraries, as I worked half of my shift alongside a librarian or library assistant, and got to hear all about their work, and was in sole charge of the service for the second half of the night. I liked the job. I could have applied for library school at this stage, but instead I decided to take the opportunity to get a broader background in librarianship, and applied for a number of graduate trainee posts. It was as I started the traineeship that I looked around for others who had blogged their experiences as trainees, and, unable to find anything, started this blog. The rest of the story is quite well documented here: from my traineeship to my MA and then my current academic librarian job supporting students and researchers at De Montfort, just like I wanted to do as a student and researcher. And my Occupational Psychology degree, the starting point of it all, helped me get a job as a subject librarian in Business.

Nice story, isn't it? However, one of the theories I learnt in my MSc Occupational Psychology is that the 'career' as we understand it, can be seen as just a story, reflecting back on how we got to where we are, and editing out all the awkward bits that don't fit. For those about to start on a librarianship career, I think it's important to mention some of these roots, which weren't part of my route, to show that we're not all perfect, inevitable fits for a librarianship career, that stops and starts are involved.

For example, I did a week's work experience in a public library as a 16 year old and in my National Record of Achievement it says "I am not sure I would like to continue to work in this field when I am older". When I finished my undergraduate degree I was a day too late to apply for a graduate trainee post in the university library. And I also have a traditional 'I was a bookish child' story to tell, but was nearly put off librarianship because I was worried it was more about the quiet anti-social child I had been, than the more extroverted lover of knowledge I've become. It's fascinating to look back on our routes and our roots, but I've learnt not to be too defined by what I've done. Who know where I'll end up next?

Labels: jobs, MA, professional development, traineeship

One final thread to tie up from the Essex job before I leave at the end of the week and that's the public library display we were trying to set up as a part of the National Year of Reading - see this previous post. Our materials finally arrived and we put them up in the foyer of the library. As you can see on the left, it was a fairly basic display, just covering the services that the public libraries in the area offer that we felt didn't overlap too much with our own: a wider range of fiction, CD / DVD rental, and bookable computers. It was important to us that we neither gave the impression that we wanted our patrons to leave us and use the public libraries instead, nor confused them by describing services that were too similar to ours. In fact a major consideration while making the display was to make sure that our circulation desk weren't going to be inundated with queries about DVD lending services we didn't offer. I just hope we made the PUBLIC LIBRARY bit prominent enough, or the staff will be cursing our names for months!

The response to the display among our library staff was really interesting - I'd say the instinctive reaction was to be slightly defensive about promoting a different library. However, when they saw that we'd focused on the things that made us different it reduced the element of competition. Lots of staff seemed interested in finding out more, and we even had a member of staff or two suggest they might check out some of the services! I think it's a good idea to some kind of dialogue between different library services in this way: there is the potential for traffic to pass between academic and public services, and perhaps even a small gesture of friendship like this between the two might make us a little bit more likely to think of each other as comrades in arms!

Labels: displays, public libraries, traineeship

I have received my supervisor's comments on my chapter rewrite and it is time to make the final rewrite and submit - there's a lot to do, so don't hold your breath! In the meantime I'm also beginning to wind down at work. I finish my trainee post at the end of August and then I enter a limbo period until mid- to late September when my MA starts. Limbo period seems like a remarkably sedate way of describing what will probably be manic thesis writing!

Time perhaps, for some reflections on the past year? Well, I have no regrets about taking the traineeship. It's been a long year to be away from home, but I've learnt a lot about librarianship and libraries. Certainly, I've got a much wider range of practical skills and experience than a year ago. In addition, the traineeship has raised as many questions as it's answered, but they've been valuable questions to ask myself: 'what kind of research librarian do I want to be?', 'what kind of research library do I want to work in?', 'how do we justify the expense of technological innovations?' and 'how can a library market itself to its patrons and paymasters?'. The job market may well aid me in answering questions about my ambitions, but they're all useful questions to drive my activities in library school.

When it comes to my PhD, it's exciting to see the end looming, but scary to think that it's all down to the line now: even thinking pessimistically, it'll soon be over one way or another! I've provisionally passed my ECDL (official confirmation still due), so at least I'll be well qualified to launch myself back into the world of word processing to finish the thesis! Here's hoping it's finished before library school launches another academic load at me!

Labels: MA, phd, professional development, traineeship

My task for this week is to take the European Computer Driving Licence. I've had my ECDL book since quite early in my trainee year, and I was meaning to start taking exams once I'd settled back into my final four months in cataloguing. When I was moved into acquisitions, however, there were new procedures to learn, and I was sidetracked for some time. Finally, I had some trouble contacting the ECDL coordinator, and at that point I realised that the best time to take the test was during this week, giving me five days to go through the seven exams!

The good news is that I'm pretty good at driving a computer already. Since I was a child I've been confident in my ability to pick up new technologies - I'm a digital native, if you will, although I'm slightly too old to be one according to some definitions! Heck, a large part of my PhD took place within a computer science department. However, taking the ECDL is a good way of proving my competence with standard packages: I worked out it's around 12 years since I touched Microsoft Access, and using Firefox and webmail has put me out of touch with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. It's also the kind of qualification that seems to tick boxes for library employers, and shows a commitment to professional development. Lastly, I am picking up some stuff that I didn't know by browsing through our training software. My learning point of today was that Powerpoint can create a folder with a presentation and a Powerpoint viewer to transfer presentations to a computer without the necessary software. I never knew this before, and given its somewhat bewildering name - Package to CD - wasn't likely to find it in a hurry.

So far I've taken three modules (for which feedback from the examiner was positive) and I've got four more to go: communication and presentation software tomorrow; spreadsheets and databases on Thursday. At the moment I'm just hoping I don't have to retake any exams - there's only so many ECDL papers I can take before I'm going cross-eyed!

In other news, it's looking like my PhD comments from my supervisors might turn up soon, and the reading list for my librarianship course has arrived. Perhaps it's a good thing I'm taking the ECDL exams so quickly... only four weeks to go in the traineeship, and only seven weeks to go until the start of my new course!

Labels: phd, professional development, traineeship

Recently I'm been faced with that age-old problem - not too little to blog about, but too little time to blog it. One of the major reasons for this problem is that I've moved departments again! I just returned to cataloguing last month, but at the last minute was shifted into the accessions department at the beginning of June. Briefly, from next year it has been decided that all the trainees here will move among three departments - cataloguing, interlibrary loans and accessions. In order to facilitate these changes it made sense to move me into accessions already, and so off I went!

Of course, this is a good opportunity for me. Getting to see three departments instead of two adds another feather to my cap (or line to my CV) and accessions is the only section of the library I didn't think I was going to see. It's interesting to see the books as they come into the library, to get a better hold on how the financial side of things works, and to perfect that age old librarian skill of stamping books with the library's name. This is something that my book collector brother would probably consider particularly nasty vandalism; apparently library books are a complete disaster from a collector's point of view, with all the stamps and stickers and labels and suchforth.

So far it's been a good experience, and I'm beginning to settle in to the extent that I'm feeling useful: I can get a book ready for cataloguing and pay and send off invoices, which feels like a significant contribution to the department. The end of term's approaching, so when we move to termtime hours and off our late-night circulation and enquiry desk rotas I'm going to be in acccessions for significant periods of time. But there are still library visits and the annual stocktake to provide plenty of variety, so it's not going to be all accession posts from now on!

Ooh, final news, our posters from the public library are on their way! Lots more to do!

Labels: book processing, traineeship

So, I'm over two thirds of the way through my traineeship, and back in the cataloguing department. This means waving goodbye to the cosy little office that is interlibrary loans, and back to the wide open spaces that are cataloguing. I'm picking up stuff again reasonably quickly - as I was assured, cataloguing is rather like riding a bicycle, except I can't ride a bicycle, and I can, to some degree, catalogue, as I hope I've been proving this week!

So, having experienced my fill of the library's departments (at least the ones we get to actively experience) I suppose I ought to jot down a few thoughts. The first is something that has come up a couple of times in this blog before, and that's the idea of circulation. The great thing about switching between departments is that you get to see the links between those departments. I've never worked in acquisitions, but as soon as books are ordered and received, they come straight through to be catalogued. They get labelled - okay, so I miss this step! - then I get to shelve them, issue them on my circulation desk shifts in the evenings and weekends, and then they come back to me to shelve again. In addition, having worked in interlibrary loans, I now know what it's like when other libraries want our books, and how we deal with researchers with wider needs than we can serve through our books and journals alone, which is pretty central to my interest in supporting research. I've got a much wider appreciation for the system of libraries than I had before I worked here, even though I was behind the desk in a library before.

In addition, I think I've picked up some pretty cool skills here. Not a lot of graduate trainees get to catalogue, and while I'm not sure that's terribly heartbreaking (and although cataloguing's not my dream job) it's illuminating to understand cataloguing at a certain level, and I'm sure it'll stand me in good stead in library school and future job interviews. Getting enquiry desk experience has given me oodles to think about in terms of how to interact with library users, and again is something really important to have on my CV. I keep on saying that this post has been a great preparation for library school. I've still got 4 months before I'll find out how true that is!

Labels: book processing, circulation, interlibrary loans, traineeship

I'm in for my first Sunday of the term. Actually, I'm in for my last Sunday of the term. Each term staff of my level are assigned approximately one Saturday and two Sundays to work. This term I've been assigned one Saturday, one Sunday, and one Saturday reserve. Generally, Sundays are better to work than Saturdays as overtime pay is better, and the hours are shorter and (for me) more convenient. However, if I manage to avoid being called in on reserve, I only have two weekend shifts this term. We'll see whether this works out well or not so well.

There are obvious downsides to working weekends, but I've got mixed feelings about this. In my old job I was an 'access assistant' which entailed working the hours which the core library staff didn't support: 16.45 to 21.15 twice a week on weekdays, and alternate Saturdays, although there was a member of the core staff on with me 16.45 to 19.00 on my weekday shifts. In my current post the core staff work weekends on shifts, meaning that the load is spread. I can see the upsides of both systems. If you can get the same staff working at weekends they have a far better idea of what's going on, and can provide a more professional service. But on the other hand, when I chose to work unsociable shifts in my old job this was a conscious choice on my part - in fact I was pleased to be able to work at those times. This meant I was far more enthusiastic and happy about working at those times, and didn't feel put upon, as I sometimes do now when my weekend shifts come up.

This all ties into the professionalism debate in librarianship. I'm about to embark on training to become a professional librarian, but in my time in libraries I've fulfilled various roles and provided a lot of help as a library assistant. The thing I like about weekend shifts in my current job is that there are genuine librarians on-site whenever the library's open. However, I wouldn't knock the level of service I managed to provide as the sole member of counter staff in my old post. Part of the reason I was able to help people out was because I was a PhD student at the university, and knew my way around research and the library system, it wasn't my job to know as such. However, with staff of a high standard willing to work unsociable hours, is it always necessary to have a qualified librarian on-site? I'm afraid I'm going to cop out, and say that I really don't know.

Labels: circulation, professionalism, traineeship

Easter break has meant a more relaxed time at the library, and to celebrate this (or at least, as a consequence of this) we went on some trips to other libraries as the region as part of our training scheme. This involved Colchester Institute Library - the local vocational college - Essex Public Library Headquarters and Chelmsford Public Library. This was a pretty mixed bag of places to go, but here's my initial thoughts.

Colchester Institute, while it's broadly in the same game of academic librarianship, is quite a different cup of tea to a university library. The staff were keen to talk about making their library as welcome as possible for their students, and one of the ways they did this was to make their library as appealing and welcoming as possible - along the lines, in fact, of a public library. It feels weird to admit that the place you work at isn't that welcoming, but I guess it makes sense for a university to have a more weighty academy-of-learning feeling to it than a place that offers vocational courses. Interestingly, Colchester Institute does have a staff with a large proportion of subject librarians (although on a much smaller scale than here), and it certainly made me think more about the range of academic library posts that were on offer to see it.

Essex Public Library Headquarters made me think in a different way about public libraries. On one hand it was fairly inspirational to see the range of activities supported across the county. The number of books that were passing through were simply phenomenal, and there were lots of interesting projects underway, such as one to provide picture books to nursery schools across the county, various tie-ins with the Essex Book Festival and Year of Reading, and it was staggering to see the sheer number of books that pass through its system. On the other hand, it felt a little under-funded and under-staffed: leavers did not seem to have been replaced, and it really highlighted the budget crunches that this sector has faced.

Chelmsford Public Library on the other hand seemed to be thriving on the changing world of librarianship. It housed a number of services which tied into the library ethos, such as a Learn Direct centre promoting skills acquisition and the county's Answers Direct service, a phone service which answered complex library queries from across Essex. The Answers Direct offices also included a homework help instant messaging service, which was particularly interesting for me, given my PhD topic of homework technologies.

All in all, then, these were valuable experiences, and a great way to get a picture of the range of library careers that are available to me. However, I'm yet to be convinced away from a career in university libraries: I think they're where I'm most useful and where I feel most at home.

Labels: library visits, traineeship

It's funny how one little thing can throw a library into disorder. Throughout this month we've been having occasional problems with the lift. The Essex University library comes complete with an exciting paternoster: for those that haven't encountered one, this is a scary-sounding continuously moving lift where cars travel round in a circle. Student can use this to get between floors by leaping on and leaping off at the appropriate floor. However, it's not really sensible to get a book trolley onto a continuously moving lift car, so there's also a nice sensible normal lift for staff with their trolleys, wheelchair users, and so on.

When there's no proper lift, students can get around the library fine, thank to the paternoster (and, of course, the stairs: we've only got five floors). However, the lift is vital for getting books back to the appropriate floor for shelving, and it's down. We therefore currently have a big pile of books downstairs, where they're returned, and no way of getting them upstairs to shelve. This makes enquiries a bit of a farce:

Hopeful student "I can't find any copies of Sociolinguistics - the catalogue says there's one in."
Helpful staff member "Have you tried looking in the enormous pile of books?"

Stressed student "I definitely returned this item, but it's not been cleared off my record!"
Stressed staff member "Have you tried looking in the enormous pile of books?"

etc.

Today we heard that the lift may well be out of order for the rest of the week, but it transpires that Estates are coming to our rescue. They are going to stop the paternoster to get trolleys on and off: I'm not sure exactly how it'll work, but I'm sure it'll be fun to watch.

In the meantime, this has really brought to home how important getting books back onto the shelves actually is in libraries. It's something that's pretty specific to this line of work - you don't need to get books back onto shelves a book shop, they just have to worry about the new ones. The main desk downstairs is called the Circulation Desk, and circulation is the very stuff of the day to day running of the library. Even though most of the time circulation only feels like time filler in between 'important' tasks, it's pretty stunning to see what happens when it breaks down.

You also really notice how many books there are when even a small proportion of them are sitting in a pile in one place!

Labels: circulation, traineeship

It's the last day of February (thanks to extra buffer day of February 29th) and as I have an unofficial self-imposed target to meet of two posts a month, you're getting two posts in one day. I've settled into interlibrary loans, and I've become pretty used to the work. There's lots of different bits and pieces to do. I started out on the basics - opening post from other libraries, acquiring books from the British Library, entering request forms, and many other similar tasks. Now I've been here for a while I'm also learning to do other tasks, and today I just completed my first solo Status Report from the British Library - responding to messages they've sent about our orders and acting on them by sending emails to patrons, making notes on accounts, and so on.

It feels like I've only been here a short period of time, and now I'm nearly heading back up to cataloguing again soon - probably in the Easter holidays to allow my co-trainee to settle in before it gets too busy. I've enjoyed my time in ILL so far - there's always a variety of things to do., and things happening. This week's excitement was a new stamp for interlibrary loan requests (pictured to the right, with the old stamp) - the requests are all numbered consecutively, and the stamp rolls on each time. The old one was very broken, with an ink pad that did very little in the way of transferring ink onto paper. I have decided that this shiny new stamp will be my legacy to the library, if nothing else.

Labels: interlibrary loans, phd, traineeship

So, how did I get kicked out of university? Not in real life, thankfully. Library Regulation 11.40 in the Albert Sloman is the one that says "the marking and defacing of books is strictly forbidden" and my co-trainee and I were tasked with producing a display to advertise to library users what a bad idea it is to deface books.

To do this, we produced two comic strips, one detailing the fantastic things that might happen if you were a good library user, and another detailing the karmic troubles befalling a bad library user. The picture on the right, with my quality acting, shows the end of the 'bad' strip, and I've included a shrunken version of the whole 'bad' strip below (low fidelity to protect the innocent co-workers bullied into participating). I found a tutorial online for making speech / thought bubbles at http://tinyurl.com/y466s7 which is well worth a look if you want to try something similar using the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Programme) - it's an open source programme with similar functionality to Photoshop.

Our colleagues helped out with acting and photography, and then I spent probably-too-long putting together the comic strip last Friday afternoon. We're pretty proud with the results. I've not made a display in quite some time, although I did take a course during my PhD on putting together poster presentations. The hardest bit, I think, was the layout of the display board itself to complement the comic format with other information - we ended up including a summary of what the comic strips showed, and some copies of defaced books. Also - a tip for anyone making a defacing books poster - we had to laminate the comic. Someone with postmodern mischief in mind defaced my face in the 'good' comic.

Labels: displays, marketing, traineeship

Well, I'm in my first week at interlibrary loans. I moved down on Thursday, so I've only had 3 days as an official member of the department, but I'm beginning to learn the pieces of the puzzle. At a contrast to cataloguing, where there's one big process you have to slowly learn, interlibrary loans consists of lots of little bits and pieces that are relatively easy to pick up, but which are harder to reconcile. I've separately learnt how to order books from the British Library, how to return books to the British Library, and how to process incoming books from the British Library, and it's only when I have a few seconds to take a step back and think (as I'm doing right now) that I've realised that's actually the whole lifecycle of the book. At least, the whole lifecycle minus the bit where the student / staff member actually uses it! There's a slightly shorter process for journal articles, as these tend to arrive electronically, but I haven't followed through the whole thing yet!

There's quite a big contrast between downstairs and upstairs so far. As ILL is near the circulation desk it's far more caught up in the 'hustle and bustle' of the library, and I find I'm moving around a lot more, and trying to multi-task a lot of the time. This is quite rewarding as I feel more involved in the day-to-day life of the library, but it can be a problem when trying to pick up new tasks! Luckily my previous experience manning the counter on my own at Nottingham forced me to develop super duper prioritisation skills.

In terms of getting settled into a routine, this week's a bit of a challenge. Mondays (yesterday) I work a late night during termtime, which means I'm on the counter 5 to 10pm, and only arrive in the library at 3. Tuesday (today) I'm at the enquiry desk from 1 to 5pm. Wednesday (tomorrow) I have my interview at Sheffield - more about this will follow, doubtless. Thursday I'm giving a library tour in the morning, and have one of our series of trainee talks in the afternoon. Finally, Friday I'm back down in ILL for a whole day, but the two other members of the ILL team are working late nights, so I'm on my own until 3pm! There's plenty of support around for me, but I'll be the only member of staff officially assigned to ILL, so the idea is for me to be able to do all the basics by then to keep the place running. We'll see how the multi-tasking goes then!

Labels: interlibrary loans, traineeship

I'm over a third of the way through my graduate trainee placement, since the start of this month, and this not only means I'm through a significant portion of my pre-library school training (one step closer to a job as a real librarian!) but also that I've reached the first departmental switch of my post. In the graduate trainee posts at Essex (which, for some reason, are known locally as student assistant posts) three staff are usually recruited, and they rotate around the different departments of the library, spending two thirds of the year in the Cataloguing department, and one third of the year in the Interlibrary loan department.

I've been up in Cataloguing until now, but I'm moving down to Interlibrary loans today - meaning I've got the 'sandwich' year, which I'm pretty happy with. This is not only a change in terms of my duties, but a change in location. Cataloguers are based 'upstairs' in the staff-only office, on the first floor. Interlibrary loaners (Loners? Surely that can't be right?!) are based on the ground floor, in a little office hidden in the short loan section, behind the main circulation desk.

The teams on the first and ground floors overlap in duties to some extent, but often operate independently. All the subject librarians are upstairs in Cataloguing, along with the accessions and labelling departments, and the deputy and head librarians. The team downstairs centres on the desk, and includes user services librarians and a large team of library assistants, some of whom are term-time only. The upshot of all this is that I'll be in a completely different section of the library from last term. I still keep all my shelving, enquiry desk and late night duties, but I'll be more likely to be asked to work on the desk if it's busy.

I'm definitely looking forward to doing Interlibrary loans. It's a service I used a huge amount during my PhD - and, as I do my corrections, I may need to use again. This means I know a lot about it from the point of view of the user, but very little of how it works in the library, with the exception of issuing procedure. We've already had our library talk from the head of Interlibrary loans, so I've got more of an idea of how things work, but it's a new section of the system to learn, and new procedures to follow. Another good way of deciding exactly what I'd like to do in my future career!

Labels: book processing, interlibrary loans, traineeship